Before you slay the messenger, at least hear me out: Valve's returned to their pastime of amalgamating mod teams, with Alien Swarm being a UT2004 mod. Basically, it's a top-down tactical shooter, and plays kinda like Diablo, I guess. This release is, however, unique for two reasons: the source code and all of the tools that were utilized to make Alien Swarm is included with the game, including the Source SDK, promising a more user-friendly modding experience for burgeoning, would-be modders.

Normally, I would usually not pay attention to this kinda stuff, but seeing how it's being developed by Valve, (one of the few remaining "good" developers left in the gaming industry) I probably will give it a try.

Hey, it beats having Team Fortress 2 updating every single hour; constantly.